How Do You Sell A Priceless Watch?

Paul Newman’s famous Rolex will be offered at a Phillips N.Y. auction in October, and collectors are gearing up for a high-stakes battle.

- Katya Kazakina

AMONG VINTAGE COLLECTORS, certain timepieces are known as holy grail watches. They’re the ones that inspire bidding frenzies and, subsequently, bragging rights.

So far, nothing tops a stainless-steel Patek Philippe that sold for $11.1 million at Phillips auction house in November. Patek produced only 281 of these 1941 wristwatches, mostly in gold; only four are known to have been made in stainless steel.

Also among the most coveted is the Daytona Rolex, a limited run of sports watches produced from 1966 until the mid-1970s, made famous by the actor and philanthropist Paul Newman, who wore one daily in the ’70s. In May, an 18-karat gold “Paul Newman” Daytona fetched $3.7 million at Phillips in Geneva. A year earlier the company sold a stainless-steel version for $2 million. But neither of those had ever graced the blue-eyed star’s wrist.

Now some lucky person will be able to buy the holiest of holy grail watches: Paul Newman’s actual Paul Newman Daytona.

“You ask 100 collectors over dinners what’s on their shopping list—the Paul Newman Daytona Rolex,” says Aurel Bacs, senior consultant for watches at Phillips, which is running the auction in New York on Oct. 26.

Phillips estimates that Newman’s stainless-steel Daytona Rolex wristwatch will fetch more than $1 million. That’s conservative; given its provenance and good condition, vintage watch enthusiasts are throwing numbers as high as $10 million.